What I carry with me.

I don't have things so I feel kind of empty... I am missing my notebook for my poems that feel like an extension of me, of my thought, as they are and as a process. But I don't like to feel attached to things, to objects and this is always creating some kind of inner conflict in me. I like to think of myself as non-materialistic, though I'm fairly sure that's not possible for anyone in this kind of Western consumerist context/world/life, maybe not for anyone, except maybe for Buddhas. In theory, they can just be and earthly things don't matter. I would like to just be. Without my notebook and without all my things. Camping is good for that, as a start. I want to give everything away sometimes. So I purge. And then later I often regret. Where did that box full of lovely little paper scraps go? Recycled and on to a new life, I guess, I should feel happy... or at least content or apathetic. Maybe they have become someone's newspaper or seven-years-in-the-making book. I can't stand the popular "news". All that sensationalism and bias and more sensationalism about death and disasters and sex. What a wonderful world. Sorry for the cynicism. Which brings me back to why I'd like someday to be more like a Buddha, more at peace with the way things are. To let things go and to be so understanding and wise. And I try, but how much can I really get beyond the world as I see it, or my mother's stress and judgment. I am her child, after all. I do love her, after all. If it weren't for her I wouldn't be here (after all). And by here I mean alive, and I mean in college so comfortably, and I mean thinking the way I do and speaking in the same tones. We sound so similar on the phone that my Pop-pop talked for ten minutes with my mother last week thinking it was me, before she realized what was going on and gave him a surprise. Maybe it was just his hearing aids. Asumption and expectation can do a number on our perceptions too. Hard to say sometimes. Old age does funny things. Meanwhile, I keep collecting things. Like fortunes from fortune cookies and yogi tea bags. I like to hold onto them, then give them to my friends or leave them on tables and benches for strangers to find. I would like to find more surprises myself. More un- and extra-ordinary little tidbits to wake thought and shake us out of our daydreams we wrap around us so tightly. I like to look at how many names there are in the sidewalk when I walk. Zoe. Dave. The Speeedster. Michael. JM loves KV. Jimmy. They were put there to be noticed, after all.